Auditel Consultant:
Adrian Burton

Food Inflation in the UK

07 Jun 2010 | Filed under: Uncategorized

As reported in the Mail last Friday with the strong exception of continental Europe the global economy is recovering well though food prices in the UK are increasing and the Consumer Price Index shows an increase of 3.7% which is double and in some cases treble the increase of some of our European neighbours.

Why you might ask?

The ever increasing cost of fuel.

Recovery from the Air Chaos recently suffered.

A weak Pound against the Dollar and Euro.

Our supermarkets import so much produce.

What is surprising is that the big 4 supermarkets claim to be helping the shopper with special offers in store, however these are usually selective and typically involve buying multiples of an item to get a saving, so encouraging you to actually pay more than perhaps you wanted.

Clearly this policy works for the supermarkets when you consider Asda announced record profits in April 2010, and Tesco is looking to purchase the budget supermarket chain Netto.

Therefore you would have to question the level to which they really do help shoppers or just tempt us to buy more for the sake of their own profits.

Is it really good for the consumer to have to rely on the big 4 players for their weekly shop last year they accounted for over 75% of the UK’s grocery shopping. Would more competition not help to drive prices down instead of what is actually happening smaller players are being taken out of the market, and the larger players actually do have a monopoly over food pricing.

At a time when consumers are having to tighten their purse strings and are being threatened with wage freezes and even wage cuts, it would be nice to think that the major supermarkets might look at their profits and for once really consider their customers over the dividends of their shareholders.

Or am I asking too much.